Curiosity Costs Jobs of Workers at Octuplets' Hospital

Nearly two dozen employees at Kaiser Permanante Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif., were recently fired or disciplined for peeking into the medical records of octuplet mom Nadya Suleman.

"It appears that for these people curiosity got the better of them and that's tragic because it led to job dismissals, which isn't easy for us to do, but it's an action we had to take," says Kaiser spokesman Jim Anderson.

Fifteen employees were fired and eight were disciplined for snooping into Suleman's records without authorization. Anderson declined to divulge the job titles of the employees involved, but said, "They ran the whole gamut of the medical staff."

Hospital officials discovered Suleman's medical records had been inappropriately accessed on two different occasions beginning three weeks ago while security personnel were monitoring Kaiser's computer network.

Anderson says none of the information appears to have been leaked or sold to the media. Kaiser officials notified Suleman about the matter on both occasions, shortly after the employees had either been fired or disciplined.